How to Recognize Social Engineering Before It’s Too Late
While technological hacking is typically at the forefront of every business owner’s mind, social engineering is often overlooked.
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While technological hacking is typically at the forefront of every business owner’s mind, social engineering is often overlooked. This form of hacking takes advantage of human nature in order to acquire sensitive information, creating a potentially disastrous situation for a business’ cybersecurity infrastructure.
However, there are ways to discourage social engineering from infiltrating your processes. These methods include educating your employees about recognizing social engineering and partnering with your IT provider to establish a solid cybersecurity structure.
What is Social Engineering?
Social engineering is a method that hackers use to gain information or access by leveraging human error. These psychological tactics take advantage of a person’s lack of knowledge, inexperience or preoccupation to commit theft or sabotage (malware, data corruption and other forms of business disruption).
Because social engineering is most commonly attributed to in-person situations, it is easy for business owners to overlook this security concern. However, the increasingly widespread use of the internet in the past decade has brought traditional scam artistry into the digital world. Social media, email and phone calls are all viable methods for “human hackers” to pose as trustworthy individuals (such as your financial partner or IT provider) and trick employees into providing access, sensitive information, money or other valuable assets.
Types of Social Engineering and Examples
Psychological manipulation is one of the more difficult forms of hacking to identify. However, educating your employees on the different methods and examples of social engineering is the best way to protect your business from these human factors in cyber security.
Phishing
Phishing is when someone poses as a legitimate person or organization in order to trick the person into trusting them with their information. If you’ve ever received an email from an unknown sender claiming to be a credible institution offering things such as extended car insurance, loan forgiveness or other “too good to be true” benefits, you may have been targeted with a phishing email.
Pretexting
Pretexting is a form of social engineering where the scam artist sets a scene to prompt employees to reveal information under pressure. It is more often used against corporations in the financial, utility and transportation industries. This method specifically relies on the inability of the employee to verify the identity of the hacker (over the phone, email, text, etc.).
An example of pretexting would be if employees were to receive an email from their IT team requesting that they verify their login credentials, download a file or grant remote access to their computers.
Tailgating
Tailgating pertains to specific infiltrations where the person gains access to an otherwise private business building by “tailing” another employee.
A common example would be if the hacker were to pose as a delivery person or a new employee who lost their keycard. Due to cultural habits, our reaction to someone walking behind us toward a door is to hold it open for them. This then gives the intruder access to an otherwise restricted area.
Spear Phishing
Similar to regular phishing, spear phishing is when a hacker poses as a trusted source in order to acquire assets from another unbeknownst person. However, the hacker instead performs preliminary research on the piece of information they want and focuses all their attention on gaining the trust of one person to acquire that information.
An example of spear phishing, especially for larger businesses or people holding positions of authority, would be ransomware. This type of social engineering often involves the hacker convincing the victim to download malicious software (often emailed) which then blocks access to their computer until collateral is traded.
Baiting
Baiting is frequently regarded as the “Trojan Horse” of social engineering. This form of hacking utilizes a promise of good things as bait, often disguised as malware.
An example of baiting would be an exciting ad that sends you to an infected website, an attractively titled email attachment or an email that offers hundreds of dollars in coupons if you fill out a survey.
Tips to Recognize Social Engineering
While all these types of social engineering may seem overwhelming, there are plenty of methods available to recognize these cyberattacks before they have a chance to take root.
Beware of emails, phone calls and other forms of communication that:
Conclusion
Social engineering takes on a variety of forms including both in-person and digital scams. While it can be easily dismissed, phishing, tailgating, pretexting and other human hacking methods can be detrimental to your business’ cybersecurity. Con artists can easily acquire access, money, information and other assets by manipulating human psychology.
However, you can recognize social engineering before it’s too late.
By educating your employees on the many different variations, real-life examples and red flags of social engineering, you can help reduce the human error that these hackers depend on. In addition to internal training, cybersecurity partners like SSE offer complete cybersecurity packages to ensure the security of your business’ information and monetary assets.
Contact us today for customized cybersecurity protection for your business!